His beak could open a bottle, and his eyes - when he lifts their soft lids -go on reading somethingjust beyond your shoulder -Blake, maybe, or the Book of Revelation.

Never mind that he eats only the black-smocked crickets, and the dragonflies if they happento be out late over the ponds, and of coursethe occasional festal mouse.Never mind that he is only a memofrom the offices of fear -

it’s not size but surge that tells uswhen we’re in touch with something real, and when I hear him in the orchardflutteringdown the little aliminumladder of his scream -when I see his wings open, like two black ferns,

a flurry of palpitationsas cold as sleetrackets across the marshlandsof my heartlike a wild spring day.

Somewhere in the universe, in the gallery of important things, the babyish owl, ruffled and rakish, sits on its pedestal.Dear, dark dapple of plush! A message, reads the label, from that mysterious conglomerate: Oblivion and Co.The hooked head staresfrom its house of dark, feathery lace.It could be a valentine.